The Bane of the Season

Bathing suit shopping, yuck! I had put it off long enough this season, it was time. I was hoping that one of the old ones stuffed in the drawer would work for this year but to my dismay I discovered that my pre-baby suit is, how shall we say, a little squeezy, and my maternity suit has a tendency to slide right off these days. So, there was nothing for it but to enter the fray of bathing suit shopping, yuck! I am convinced the Lord hears the prayers of bathing suit shoppers desiring to be as modest as possible. I had intended to head to the mall but was swinging through Target to pick up some odds and ends and just happened to wander through the women's clothing department. There, on the clearance rack I spied the only suit in the store that I would dare wear in public, there was only one,  it was just my size, and (drum roll please), it was only nine dollars! Now this suit, it is no 1800's bathing outfit. I secretly think that it would be quite fun splashing around in frilly pantaloons with a bathing dress and matching parasol, but since I need the suit for skiing at Glen Lake this summer, I had to pick something a little less vintage, besides, I probably would have lost the parasol in the wake.  I truly believe that God honors our desires and searches as we honor Him, even as it relates to bathing suit shopping, yuck! (Let me go ahead and clarify, Jon did not post this one!)

Foodie: One who has an ardent or refined interest in food

Our child loves a good meal! Sonora tasted her first solid food (and I use the term solid loosely because there is nothing solid about runny rice cereal) at five months old and had absolutely no use for it so we waited until she was six months old and then started introducing yellow and orange vegetables into her diet per our pediatrician's counsel. She is a big fan of real food, not the runny fake stuff. She loved vegetables from the beginning. We waited a week between introducing each new food to make sure that she would not have any food allergies and then between seven and eight months old we turned her loose. She loves new food, the normal and the exotic. The only food that she really did not take to at first was mushed green beans and smashed peas. She made terrible faces and gagged on each spoonful. However, remembering what a doctor in Abilene said, who was also a specialist on childhood obesity, I continued to introduced the aforementioned nasty green stuff. This doctor said that you cannot and should not determine whether or not a child likes a certain food until it has been introduced to them at least eighteen times. That is a lot of times, I'm betting that most people give up after two or three. Anyway after seven or eight meals of the mushed greens she forgot that she wasn't a fan and gulped them down with everything else. Now, our little foodie enjoys avocado, eggplant, papaya, bean sprouts, you name it! I'm hoping that she will be like her eight year old Uncle Alec and eat whole cucumbers and tomatoes during movies (instead of popcorn), and turn down a cheeseburger for a chicken caesar salad!

Making Memories

We had such a great Memorial Day weekend with my (Lisa's) family. We spent a lot of time outside enjoying battlefields, waterfalls, creeks, trees, frogs, trails, sun, and shade. We did not enjoy the ticks as much but there were a few of those as well. Thank you so much to Mom, Dad, Natalie, Mitch, Juliana, and Alec and to Grandmother and Grandaddy as well, who all came and contributed to such a fun weekend. We had many delicious meals and with all those hands in the kitchen, cleanup was a breeze. It makes having lots of kids to help in the kitchen sound so appealing..... of course there are many other appealing reasons to have children! Sonora adores her Aunts and Uncles and loved giving her Grandmam and Grandaddy lots of slimy kisses, is there a better kind of kiss? I submit that there is not.  

I think that one of my favorite parts of the weekend was our trip to Greeter Falls in Tennessee. The drive was lovely and a rousing game of 20 Questions over the walkie talkies between the two cars helped to keep us entertained. If you are ever looking for some good 20 Questions topics may I suggest "Baklava" and "Alan Shepherd" as tricky options. 

Once we reached the park we had a fantastic hike to the falls and cooled off by wading in the rather chilly pools and rivers below the waterfall. It was so much fun. I couldn't believe how much Sonora loved being in the freezing cold water. Her little toes felt like ice cubes when we pulled her out but she just couldn't get enough of the water. My mom has always said that kids do not have nerve endings.

That evening was also a highlight as we had dinner at a fun Italian restaurant just up the hill from the walking bridge in downtown Chattanooga. We ended the evening by polishing off mom's birthday cake from Marble Slab Creamery, de-lish! We extended the birthday celebration to this weekend though the big day was last Saturday. There were so many other highlights from this weekend including two Larkin nights (listening to my Dad read the most recent chapters of the book he is currently writing) - a big time family favorite; listening to the kids quote the entire chapter of Romans 8 from memory complete with actions- very encouraging; watching Natalie perform Love is a Fallacy by Max Shulman - fantastic; picnicking in the park - even more fun with Grandmother and Grandaddy; and so much stimulating conversation and laughter. A truly wonderful weekend, the only thing that could have made it better is if Clint and William could have joined us. William did join us via telephone and is the person on the other end of the phone that Natalie is holding to her ear in the family pictures that we took on the bridge.

A perfectly fabulous weekend, thank you to everyone involved!

(I would like to add more pictures but it has taken quite some time to attach the three that I have included. Perhaps I can get my fabulous and tech savvy husband to post them all on our website. So stay tuned...)

The Way of the Future....

Let the record state that since this blog took off there has been a new post every single day. Let's not get used to that OK? The past few days I have been preparing for company this weekend. My (Lisa) family is coming to spend Memorial Day weekend with us and we are very excited. We have lots of outdoor expeditions planned because this is such a great area to be outside. Currently the schedule includes a trip to the largest and oldest Civil War battlefield, hiking to a waterfall and swimming in the pool below once we get there, tubing/rafting down the creek, and lots of eating. But my muse today is not God's incredible creation and our love of exploring it. Today, my muse is house cleaning. I love a clean house. The smell, the look.... so fresh and peaceful, I just love it. In fact, at our home in Texas, which had new thick carpet in all the living areas (as opposed to our home in Georgia that has hard wood floors), I admit that on more that one occasion I would step from the kitchen tile, to the fireplace hearth, to the chair in order to avoid messing up the vacuum cleaner marks on the living room floor thereby extending that freshly vacuumed look! However, after sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping only to have it need everything again just a few days (if not hours) later, you have to ask yourself, why in the world did we ever give up dirt floors? I have four rooms of floors to go before my family arrives and I think to myself, if this were all dirt, I'd be done. It's just something to consider. Dirt floors, pure genius.....

Welcome to the World, Dash!

Congratulations to Derek & Jenny Thompson on the birth of their little boy, Dasher Everette! We can hardly wait to meet baby Dash in person! Sonora is especially looking forward to teaching him all about peek-a-boo and the merits of  the Cheerio!  We love you!

Sonora Spotlight

It is difficult to explain how sweet, beautiful, and talented our wonderful little girl really is, but I shall do my best to enlighten you. The past two weeks have been filled with new tricks for Sonora as she is getting stronger and more coordinated. She is starting to go from belly crawl to sitting up (with such perfect posture), back to belly crawling, to balancing and rocking on hands and knees, back to sitting up, etc. Such skill, I tell you! Then her newest trick, that not even Jon has seen yet, is pulling herself up to a standing position on the edge of the bathtub or ottoman. Of this trick, she is currently most excited about. As soon as she gets herself pulled up and standing she squeals with delight, waves her hands in the air, thereby letting go of her support and tumbling wildly backwards where I scoop her up at the last possible second and she squeals even harder. We are still working on the stability factor.

Last week she began saying her first word: Bye-bye! She cannot say it without waving as well, but what is goodbye without a good wave? She is pretty consistent in saying it at the appropriate time and also thinks that it is quite a funny trick. Her second word is shaping up to be "Bible", I kid you not! Twice now she has looked at or patted that Holy Book and said quite clearly, Bi-ble. I will wait until it happens a few more times and then I am most definitely ordering a "My child is the most pious child ever" bumper-sticker.

Her favorite game is peek-a-boo, she will play with anyone, anywhere, anytime. In restaurants she will use the table cloth as peek-a-boo cover, in Church she will use her dress, she is resourceful. Yesterday as I was cleaning the kitchen, she became desperate for a good round.  She grabbed Jon's shorts out of the pile of laundry that was awaiting its folding and started playing peek-a-boo with each inanimate object in the room. First the chair was delighted with her sudden appearance behind the shorts, then the fan, then the plant, the couch, etc. Each piece of furniture had its turn and she just grinned and grinned each time she pulled the shorts off of her head, as I watched while peeking around the kitchen window. It was precious!

Sonora is a constant source of delight and joy, we are so grateful to the Lord for this most amazing gift of a child!

Maryland, Virginia, & People We Love

Where to begin..... If I (Lisa) try to go back and capture everything so that our lives are officially up to date on a blog then I will sink under the pressure and this blog will not even get off the ground. And so I will only go back as far as last weekend and therefore hopefully keep this thing moving forward.

We left last Thursday and drove up to Annapolis, MD to visit Jon's cousin Sarah and her husband Zeb. We had so much fun with this fantastic couple in their wonderful digs. Zeb and Sarah literally live across the street from the Naval Academy. As they are on the third floor you get a great view over the academy walls from their windows. Each morning we watched the midshipmen raise the flag at reveille and we laughed every time because the speaker system was on the fritz and you could only hear every 5th or 6th note and even those came out a bit screechy. Nevertheless the large and beautiful flag was unfurled and it was fun to have front row seats while sipping our morning coffee. Annapolis is right on the water and has brick cobbled streets filled with shops, all sorts of eateries, and beautiful historical homes. Sonora loved cuddling with Sarah, head-butting Zeb, hiding Cheerios under their couch, eating corned beef at the Irish pub, listening to her own echo in the beautiful Naval Academy chapel (it looks like a European Cathedral), watching the boats on the water, and waking the whole apartment building up before 7 am each morning! Thank you Sarah and Zeb for a delightful time!

After leaving Annapolis we headed to Purcellville, VA to meet up with Lisa's family and the family of our favorite Will Glaser. Will and Natalie began courting this past Fall and we have really enjoyed getting to know this stellar young man and his family. Will graduated from Patrick Henry College, the school both he and Natalie attend, and we were graciously invited to the festivities. Between the Harris', Shaffer's, and Glasers' (and their extended family present) there were twenty-something of us, taking Purcellville by storm. Some highlights include each of William's awards at graduation, getting to finally meet everyone, politely kicking the lady and her dog out of the gazebo at the park so that the moms could take pictures of William and Natalie "where it all began", Jon and my sketch in the park titled "Will & Natalie Together at Last", the fun and delicious restaurants we took over, late night chocolate fondu, Will's sister Jessica on the harp - exquisite, and watching the Blockbuster hit: A Little Trouble on the Train starring Will and Alec. PHC is situated so beautifully in the rolling hills of Virginia and the weather was perfect. We love William and his family even more now, thank you to everyone for so many special memories!

Just the beginning

This is the beginning of our family Blog...I imagine that my beautiful wife will keep this up mostly and I will be the technical support.  If you have any complaints email Sonora.  We'll try to post some commentary to fill in the details to the pictures we've posted on our website www.jlshaffer.net  We hope you enjoy!

--Jon, Lisa, & Sonora